Thesis Seminar
Cod: 23012
Department: DCET
ECTS: 0
Scientific area: Digital Media Art
Total working hours: 3120
Total contact time: 180

This learning unit aims at building a research and development-intervention project specific in digital media art to implement preferably in contexts of real experimentation and whose final product will materialize in a doctoral thesis. It must configure the identification of new problems and raise, in the conceptual and praxeological plan, the search for creative responses adjusted to the contexts of intervention.

Doctoral Thesis
Doctorate Work
Doctor in Digital Media Art

When concluding this learning unit students shall be able to:
  • Critically analyze the contexts of development-intervention in digital media art;
  • Design, implement and evaluate a research and development-intervention project in digital media art;
  • Develop instrumentation, conceptual and methodologically, adjusted to the development of the project of research, artistic experimentation and development-intervention;
  • Write critical documentation about the project developed, incorporating all the elements produced in a final thesis.

The diversity of the intervention contexts where it is expected the work of the thesis will take place, recommended the opening of the programmatic topics that will be defining as the student progresses in his/her doctoral work. There are, however, some topics that should be contemplated:
  1. Observation and analysis of contexts of research-action, target audiences and domains of intervention in digital media art;
  2. Development of projects of research, artistic experimentation and development-intervention (design, implementation and evaluation);
  3. Development of methodologies and strategies for requirements analysis, design and implementation of solutions in digital media art, in contexts of use, experimentation and social intervention;
  4. Operationalization of methodologies and strategies for research and development in digital media art (project design, data collection and analysis, evaluation, reflection ...);
  5. Writing of academic, scientific and artistic texts.

  • “Research Issues In Art Design and Media”, Knight, J., Jefsioutine, M., ISSN 1474-2365, Issue No.3 Summer 2002.
  • “A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations”, Turabian, K., University Of Chicago Press, ISBN: 978-0226816272;
  • “Research Issues In Art Design and Media”, Knight, J., Jefsioutine, M., ISSN 1474-2365, Issue No.3 Summer 2002.
  • “Digital Art (World of Art)”, Paul, Ch., Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0500203679;
  • “Remediation: Understanding New Media”, Bolter, J.D., Grusin, R., The MIT Press, ISBN: 0262522799;
  • “From Technological to Virtual Art”, Popper, F., The MIT Press, ISBN: 026216230X;
  • “Information Arts : Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology”, Wilson, S., The MIT Press, ISBN: 0262731584;
  • “Art and Science”, Strosberg, E., Abbeville Press, ISBN: 0789207133.
  • “A/R/Tography: Rendering Self Through Arts-Based Living Inquiry”, Irwin, R., De Cosson, A. (Eds)., Pacific Educational Press (January 15, 2004), ISBN: 978-1895766707.

Blended learning

The methodological referential for the practices of teaching and learning in this learning unit is based on the research and development-intervention supported by critical reflection. This project involves students in a process of identification, analysis of situations of intervention and/or artistic experimentation (of digital media art), construction of strategies for research and development-intervention on them, continuous assessment and final evaluation. This process of reflection-action promotes the gradual buildup of his/her critical autonomy, to the extent that it deepens, in a progressive and spiraled manner, his/her learning, both conceptually and experientially, which results in the doctoral thesis to be publicly defended before a jury.
The contact with the advisor is done through online tutoring and classroom sessions. The final evaluation results from the evaluation of the public defense and also of a component of continuous assessment in a proportion not exceeding 10%.

Given that the main objective of this learning unit is to provide students with an opportunity to construct and implement a research and development-intervention project specific to digital media art whose final product materializes in the doctoral thesis, it is proposed, therefore, as teaching methodologies, an approach to learning of the collaborative
online type, in virtual class, strongly based on the discussion of topics of a theoretical nature (to assimilate the various techniques, methodologies o research-intervention) and also an approach to learning of the research and development-intervention type that materializes in the form of a concrete research-intervention project.